Mainframe 2008 year in review

With the release of IBM's z10 and with Linux on the mainframe gaining traction, 2008 was a big year for big iron. But forces such as independent software vendors and the Web itself threaten mainframe vitality.

By submitting my Email address I confirm that I have read and accepted the Terms of Use and Declaration of Consent.

By submitting your personal information, you agree to receive emails regarding relevant products and special offers from TechTarget and its partners. You also agree that your personal information may be transferred and processed in the United States, and that you have read and agree to the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy.

the Enterprise Class and its smaller sibling, the Business Class. But that wasn't the only mainframe news of the year. Software vendors attempted to ease software costs for mainframers, Linux on the mainframe continued to grow traction, and competing vendors made their best pitch for migration off the platform.

The Mainframe: Month by monthJanuary. We opened the year with some mainframe New Year's resolutions. Tipster Robert Crawford cautioned against outsourcing too much and warned that independent software vendors (ISVs) have helped kill the mainframe. According to Crawford, IBM has done well in enabling big iron for the Web, but it needs to get back to its roots and fine-tune foundational firmware like CICS.

Speaking of ISVs, mainframe software giant CA announced a plan to reduce mainframers' software costs by offering the option to buy according to millions of service units (MSUs) instead of millions of instructions per second (MIPS) on the reasoning that MIPS doesn't measure the actual consumption of work, while MSU does.

February. February was the month of the z10 mainframe. SearchDataCenter.com obtained an internal IBM document on the new mainframe and broke the details a week before the official IBM announcement of z10. The new big iron has the potential for about 1.5 TB of memory and 64 4.4 GHz processors, about 100% more CPU performance, and triple the memory capacity of its predecessor, the z9.

Meanwhile, Crawford busted five mainframe myths, including that the mainframe is old technology, that it requires too many human resources to manage, and that big iron can't compete in an Internet-driven world.

Also in user news from the show, Jim Horne from Lowe's discussed how determining mainframe capacity isn't what it may seem because MSU can be imprecise. Horne recommended the Java-based tool zPCR, or System z Processor Capacity Reference, to get more accurate capacity data.

April. At the AFCOM user group show in Orlando in early April, SearchDataCenter.com spoke with Ralph Crosby, the chief technology officer of BMC Software's's mainframe business. Crosby discussed virtual machine sprawl on the mainframe and how the z10 has boosted WebSphere performance, among other topics.

Later in the month, we asked whether SOA and BRIC – which refers to the sales markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China – had depleted mainframe innovation.

May. We got an update on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), which last year began migrating off the mainframe and, at the end of April, unplugged its last big iron unit. Francis Feldman from NYSE's technology division said that although the migration made sense, it was still cause for mourning, as he is "an old mainframe hack."

June. Piggybacking off the previous month's discussion of specialty processors, a director in the IT center in Harris County, Texas – the third largest county in the country – said that determining how much eligible work can fit on a zIIP or a z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) can be a "dark art."

Robert Crawford argued that it's time to commoditize mainframe software costs. "Personally, nothing is more aggravating than having to pay more for the very same software just because the new CPU runs faster or the box has more processing capacity," he wrote. Many mainframers agree.

Also in July, IBM announced that it would enhance the functionality of z/VM on the z10 mainframe by allowing it to use multiple specialty processors (IFL/zIIP/zAAP) within a single logical partition (LPAR). Later in the month, Jeff Savit from Sun and some IBMers got into an online fracas over the virtualization benefits of the z10. We deemed it a cage match.

Gartner released some second-quarter revenue numbers, which indicated that the
mainframe grew 5.7%. We speculated that maybe, just maybe, it might have something to do with the z10 release.

Matt Stansberry, SearchDataCenter.com's senior site editor wrote a detailed piece on zLinux. In particular, Stansberry addressed the speculation that more than half of the mainframe capacity that IBM sells – measured in MIPS – were to run Linux on the mainframe.

A big hit was a Share user group conference video from San Jose, Calif., of a group of mainframers on a morning jog. Mainframers may be getting old, but they're doing their best to stay healthy, – or at least some are.

Other news from Share included these features:

The conference keynote, which focused on virtualization, energy consumption and cloud computing, and not the mainframe.

October. IBM pushed out its z10 Business Class, the smaller sibling of the z10 Enterprise Class it announced earlier in the year. As part of the announcement, IBM offered what amounted to a layaway program for the z10 Business Class for shops that want their big iron now but might not have the budget in the fourth fiscal quarter of this year.

OpenSolaris on the mainframe became available and will run on an IFL under z/VM, similar to Linux. We spoke to Sine Nomine Associates' David Boyes, who developed the technology.

E-Zine

0 comments

E-Mail

Username / Password

Password

By submitting you agree to receive email from TechTarget and its partners. If you reside outside of the United States, you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Privacy